


a very very very fine house

by irnan



Series: mischiefmanaged!verse [19]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Gen, and they lived happily ever after, mischiefmanaged!verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-10
Updated: 2012-05-10
Packaged: 2017-11-05 02:53:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/401665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irnan/pseuds/irnan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>with two cats in the yard/ life used to be so hard/ now everything is easy cause of you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a very very very fine house

The first time Ginny saw the house, it sort of took her breath away - mostly because it was so awful to look at it. It was the house Harry had been born in; it was the house his parents had died in. Seeing it shattered, ruined, broken down and overgrown was oddly like seeing Harry himself - like seeing herself, like seeing Ron and Hermione and Neville and Luna and George and Andromeda Black and Mum and Dad and _everyone_ \- turned inside out and put on display. There was raw agony in the broken beams, terror in the wrecked and twisted staircase, grief in all the walls. She glanced over at him, and saw him looking at her past Luna and Ron, and knew he could tell what she was thinking.

She almost couldn't step inside; had to clench her fists to keep her hands from shaking.

Upstairs, the floor of what had once been Harry's nursery was almost completely missing. She picked her way across faltering beams between holes through which she could see into the room below her, following Sirius as he stumbled from James Potter's body to Lily's, following Hagrid as he lifted a frightened child out of the wreckage.

Above her, the evening sunlight shone unhindered between roof tiles and crossbeams. Behind her, Harry's footsteps creaked alarmingly.

Ginny didn't turn. She didn't want him to see she was crying.

"They took the debris out," he said. "The furniture and - and stuff. I think, if it had still been here - all our things..."

Our things: not _their things_ , not _Mum and Dad's things_ , but _our things_.

"I'm going to redesign it. This'll just be the end of the corridor. I don't want it... youknow, to be the room where my Mum died."

Ginny nodded, hair flying. "That's - that's good."

"I'm sorry I left you behind again."

She shook her head, and had to press the heels of her hands into her eyes before she spoke. "It's - it's all right. I - this - this one, I understand."

It was like looking at Fred's empty room, the clothes he'd never wear again, the cutlery he wouldn't use, the books he'd never read. They had buried him with his wand, like a knight of old with his weapons clasped in his hands, his helm at his feet, and suddenly she was sobbing, great rasping sobs torn out of her chest and leaving her shaking, barely able to breath through them. Harry wrapped his arms around her and knelt on the floor with her as she shook, and how awful was it that they were standing in the place where _his_ family had been torn apart but _she_ was the one crying for _hers_?

Did he have any ability left to cry for anyone?

 

*********

 

Eight weeks later it was like walking into Sleeping Beauty's palace after the Prince had kissed her. The briars had drawn back and the cracks were pulling themselves shut; the roof was whole, the upper floor stabilised, they had gas lights and a stove and furniture.

Although, Ginny couldn't help but notice, still only the one bedroom. She thought it was sort of adorable, the three camp beds squashed in there like that, the floor littered with shoes and socks. Hermione had added a washing hamper, but Ginny doubted it saw much use. At least, she assumed it had been Hermione.

At the end of the corridor there was a window-seat, and nothing else.

 

*********

 

Harry saw ghosts in the house. Not literally, not the kind of ghosts that haunted Hogwarts, not the memory-shades who had come to him in the Forest to guide him home. Echoes, shadows, coming out of the walls as the house was rebuilt and remodelled and repaired. He realised now that all the photos he had of himself as a baby with his parents had been taken in this house, in the garden, in the street outside. Everything he did had some echo in them, or could have had some echo in them if only enough photographs had survived.

It was an impossibly, implausibly comforting notion, though the more sure he became of the home he was making, the less he saw them. He didn't let himself regret that for very long. He hadn't come back from King's Cross for regrets.

 

*********

 

Ginny never really shook off that initial image of the house symbolising Harry himself. On the contrary - the closer they became, the more she loved it. Sometimes she would come out of a room suddenly and see Harry standing in the hall or by a doorway, palm flat against a wall or a window-sill or the bannister, smiling privately to himself.

 

*********

 

Finally, four years later: Moving Day.

Ginny Side-Alonged him home, which was probably for the best; he and Ron and Hermione had clung to each other for nearly ten minutes in the lounge, trying hard to pretend they weren't all crying their eyes out.

"Wimp," said Ginny callously.

"Whatever," said Harry.

"All this over finally getting the house to ourselves."

"All this over realising that for the first time in twelve years I'm not living under the same roof as Ron and Hermione any more."

"Like I said," she informed him, pushing open the kitchen door, "wimp."

They went inside; Harry locked the door behind them. The house was still and quiet and oddly empty; half the furniture and two-thirds of the books were gone; there were two bedrooms empty instead of just one; they didn't actually need the downstairs bathroom anymore - one was enough.

Silence.

"Well?" said Ginny at last.

"I always wanted to move that bloody bookshelf and have the sofa under the window," Harry said.

Ten minutes later the place looked like something out of a Disney cartoon. Ginny was laughing as she rearranged the kitchen drawers, cutlery and implements marching in orderly rows from one drawer to the next; Harry had conjured an armchair out of nothing and it was busy bumping the sofa out of the way and settling into the prime spot in the lounge.

"You know we're going to put it back the way it was tomorrow morning," he called.

"That's not the _point_ , though, is it?" Ginny called back.

Quite right too - at least as far as Harry was concerned, the point was the bit where they had an argument about whether to put the family photos on the mantelpiece or the window-sill that got so ridiculous it actually ended in a cushion-fight:

"How the hell will you ever open that bloody window, you're always opening that bloody window!"

"I don't care - I'm not having everyone sitting above the fireplace _watching_ me all the time I'm doing whatever on the sofa!"

"Such" -thwack - "as" - thwack - "what!"

"Well, this," Harry said and kissed her. Considering that she was the one who tripped him onto the sofa he felt afterwards that was certainly a score for his side. 

(In the end, the family photos went into the hall, where they'd be on moderately prominent display but in (less) no danger of accidentally becoming voyeurs.)

 

*********

  


It took them half the day to clear the house out and arrange everything in neat piles on the lawn. An April drizzle had started around eleven-ish, but Ginny had irritably cast a charm on the back garden, and the rain was running off an invisible roof and into the lanes beyond the hedges. The boys were asleep in a large cardboard box stuffed with blankets - each of them had a hand clamped in Norbert the Norwegian Ridgeback's worn green plush.

There was a pile marked 'go' (impressive) and a pile marked 'stay' (considerably smaller) and a pile marked 'ron and hermione' (smaller still) and a pile marked 'what the hell'; this last chiefly consisted of stuff like paint tins and filthy dust sheets left over from the renovation that Harry had forgotten, in the nine years since, to throw away.

"I find it _incredible_ ," said Ginny, hands on her hips, "that we've somehow managed to collect so much stuff in so comparatively short a time."

Harry looked around the lawn helplessly. "I know," he said. "I didn't have this much when I left school."

Ginny sighed. "I suspect that had a lot to do with a) boarding school and b) being on the run," she said dryly.

Harry shrugged. It wasn't a time he was tempted to remember - not now, in his own back garden surrounded by his own possessions with his baby sons asleep at his right hand and his pregnant wife standing in front of him.

"But the point is, and I think we're agreed on this, that the attic is technically big enough to convert it," he said.

"It is," Ginny agreed. "Superfluous stuff will have to go in the cellar from now on. How long d'you think it will take?"

Harry pressed his lips together. "Well, we did the whole house in about three months... d'you want an ensuite, that'd take longer. But definitely -"

"Look, we need to be out of our bedroom in time to move everything around and make up the baby's room -"

"I know that, Gin -"

"And I'm five months now, so it's not like -"

"Gin, I was there, I know the due date as well as the boys' birthdays -"

"But I don't want Teddy to feel like we're banishing him to the smallest room or anything like that -"

"He won't -"

"It's not as if I'm in a position to really help you with anything -"

"Oh, sod it," Harry said and kissed her quiet.

She crossed her arms over her chest and refused to kiss him back, glaring when he drew away.

"Not a tenable response to the problem," she said. "In fact, when you get right down to it, it _created_ the problem."

They both dropped their eyes to the swell of her belly. Harry sighed and put his hand over it, feeling the warm stretch of her skin, looking forward to the baby kicking against his palm.

"We could move," he said quietly.

Ginny glanced up at him and opened her mouth to speak, but then decided against it.

"We could move," he said again. It was easier the second time. He bit the rest of the speech out past the pain in his chest. "I'd never sell this house, but Ginny, between the two of us, we're actually rolling in it. We could go to Grimmauld Place at first, with the new baby. It'd be easier - so much easier on all of us, especially you."

"Move," she repeated quietly. "We wouldn't even need to buy. You're right, we couldn't live in Grimmauld Place, not permanently. But there's your grandparents' house - Seaview."

"There is," Harry agreed. "It's in pretty good condition, it wouldn't even take as long as - as this one did. And there's more than enough room for all of us - hell, it could probably fit us, Andromeda and Teddy _and_ Ron and Hermione with their two."

"It could," said Ginny. "You're right. We should do that."

Harry swallowed hard. Sensible, it was sensible, it was best for them all - and he wasn't giving anything up, was he? His Dad had grown up at Seaview - he and Mum had been married in the church in the little village two miles from the manor. The Vicar there remembered performing the bloody ceremony and had used to drink sherry with his grandparents, for God's sake. The house was big and the grounds were extensive; the wards would be easy to replace, the boys would have more than enough space.

It was best. It _was_. And this house would still be here, waiting for him the way it had -

He rammed the gate shut on those kinds of thoughts. They'd go to Seaview, and they'd be happy there; actually Harry was fairly certain that they would even manage to be happy in Grimmauld Place. It was just that neither he nor Ginny wanted to put the effort in, not there. The important thing was that there was room for the baby, and that the boys had the space to run as riot as they wanted, and that he didn't ever have to sit Teddy down and ask him to give up his room in his godfather's home.

"All right," he said. "Look. Ron and I'll go over to Cumbria this weekend and see what needs doing - we don't have to do this one ourselves, we can hire somebody..."

Ginny's hair fell over her shoulders as she turned her head; he could see the tension in her jaw and the tears at the corners of her eyes. She nodded, resolved, and licked her lips: "OK, we'll do that. We'll all go, we can - can take the boys -"

"You don't want to move," Harry said, hearing the break in her voice.

Ginny rounded on him. "No! No I don't. I _love_ this house, you bloody idiot."

"Well, so do I! I'd hate to move, the idea turns my stomach."

"Then why bring it up?!"

"Because -" Harry looked, helplessly, at the boys - at her - at the attic window and the fuss they would have to put themselves through to sort this out.

"You're an idiot," Ginny said angrily. "I _don't ever want_ to live _anywhere else_."

Harry drew a breath of purest relief. "Then let's _not_. _Ever_."

Ginny sighed and let her head fall forwards against his collar bone. Harry gathered her up and sat down on the bench below the kitchen window, holding her on his lap.

"So, the Grimmauld Place idea isn't too bad," he said into her hair. "We can stay there while I fix the attic up. And then we'll do the baby's room together."

"Hmm," Ginny said. "That's a better plan. James can have our room; Al can have his. Teddy had better take Al's, he'll sulk I know but it's the smallest and he's not here that often anymore - it's only fair. Baby can have Teddy's old room."

"And we've got a whole floor all to ourselves," Harry said, smiling. "Imagine..."

"Mind, yours, gutter, out," said Ginny, and wriggled a bit on his lap in a manner that suggested rather the opposite.

   
*********

 

It's half past three, and the house is frighteningly quiet.

"Rubbish," says Ginny. "It's no different to when they were all at school together."

Harry kicks at the sofa leg in irritation. "It is different," he says grumpily.

"Rubbish," Ginny says again. Then, remembering she can swear now,  she says, "Bollocks."

"Hmmph."

"You did this when Andromeda made Teddy move his bedroom out after Lily was born. _And_ after Lily went to Hogwarts."

Harry threw himself on the sofa he'd just been abusing and glared at the mantelpiece opposite.

"Are you worried about him?"

"Look, you raised him too," says Harry. "You know what he's like. You know what his friends are like."

"I think it's cute," says Ginny. "The five of them sharing a house together, it's nice."

"In _Hogsmeade_."

"...yeah."

"So close to the castle they needn't have left school at all. And he can get inside the grounds any time he likes."

"Well, _I_ didn't give him the Marauder's Map."

"Neither did I," says Harry, feeling slighted. "He nicked it off of me after Teddy gave it back."

Ginny ignores this. "And they've all got jobs, amazingly; although maybe it'd be more suprising if anyone turned down Harry Potter's kid for a job..."

"You know as well as I do that Jim applied to St Mungo's anonymously."

"And got it. In a place Teddy works at -"

"You know as well as I do that Teddy's a filthy enabler."

Ginny laughs. She drops her jacket over the armchair and comes to sit beside him, drawing her shoes off and letting them drop on the carpet, propping her bare feet on the coffee table. "Well, if he fails completely at being an independent adult - which he won't - he can always come home."

Harry lets his head fall against the back of the sofa, looking up at the dark wood beams of the ceiling: there's Teddy's scorch mark, the splatter of red paint on the one near the kitchen door that got left there during the renovations, the noticably newer wood of the beams on the right hand side replacing those that had, once, fifty years ago, been blasted away by the force of a rebounding Killing Curse. He's got a photo of his Dad standing on a chair and putting in that light fixture just above his head while Sirius sprawls in the armchair nearby with a small squirming bundle in his arms.

"The house'll still be here, at any rate," he says and takes her hand in his.


End file.
